A listing for a mysterious “Surface Pro 8” prototype appeared on eBay (via TechRadar), potentially revealing what to expect from the next version of Microsoft’s flagship tablet. The listing for the alleged Surface Pro 8 prototype was apparently posted on October 31 on eBay with a starting price of $1,300, and it found a new owner the next day after a single bid.
“Yes, you read the title right. Up for sale is a Surface Pro 8 engineering model, it has ES version of 11th gen i7-1165G7 processor, 32GB ram at 4267Mhz(Pro 7 maxed out at 16GB) and 1TB Samsung SSD. Perfectly working, but as it is unreleased do backup driver yourself before restoring otherwise you cannot find it online,” the listing description mentioned.
The eBay listing included a couple of pictures showing a tablet that looks pretty much identical to the Surface Pro 7. However, if the mentioned specs are real, the addition of 11th gen quad-core Intel Core processors and a new 32GB RAM option on high-end models would be quite the upgrade when you take into account the slim form factor.
We don’t know if this prototype is real, and it would be actually quite risky for anyone to sell a prototype device from such a big company on eBay. It’s probably good to take the information on that eBay listing with a grain of salt, even though the different pictures look quite legitimate.
If Microsoft does stick with the current Surface Pro design for its new tablet, Surface fans hoping to see the slimmer and nicer Surface Pro X design coming to the Surface Pro 8 may be disappointed. However, Microsoft slowly iterates, and there’s nothing fundamentally wrong with the current Surface Pro design.
Microsoft’s Surface Pro 7 was released back in October 2019, and we usually see a new model every year. Microsoft did release a new configuration of its Surface Pro X last month along with its new Surface Laptop Go, so it looks like we’ll need to wait a bit more before we see the Surface Pro 8 for real.
